The government has undertaken a "test concept" on the creation of a care record for clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), according to Ailsa Claire, lead on commissioning intelligence for clinical commissioning groups at the Department of Health and director of commissioning development at NHS Yorkshire and the Humber.

Speaking at a seminar about information sharing in the NHS held by the King's Fund and IBM, she said that the system will aim to support clinical practice, adding that "somewhere at least in one place in the country, these things exist".

"Most people have done them through workarounds or have created them in some way," she told the audience, adding that after working with CCGs for nine months her team has found that they are keen on the idea.

The plans would also mean that patients would be able to access a virtual patient record, so that patient access to records is aggregated upwards instead of downwards.

"Although visible through primary care, that doesn't mean you have to access it through primary care. There would be patient access to a virtual care record that was complete," she explained.

Claire also said that the government was working on integrating finance and activity data, which will include the creation of a national finance spine, so that GPs can keep up to date with what they are working one.

"GPs will be able to know as they do the work, 'What they have I committed to, what have I spent?', which will enable there to be validation to the trust about what happened, so the GPs can say, 'I don't just understand the connection here,'" she added.

Claire stressed that it was important for information used by CCGs to be clear and timely and for a national set of standards to be created by the NHS Commissioning Board. Ideally this should be mandated and could also be in the regulatory framework for the providers. She said that the board has a "unique" role to play in this, as for the first time there will be one organisation setting the data standards for quality and governance.

But she warned: "If we don't change the way we do information and intelligence, clinical commissioning will fail. It will be a repeat of what primary care trusts (PCTs) did."

When she started to work with CCGs, Claire said that she was initially concerned that everyone was designing commissioning support units, based on the idea that this was what PCTs did. She said to tackle this, her team started by asking the groups what their narrative was and how they were going to behave.

Claire told the audience that there is something "fundamentally different" about what is going on under the government's new plans compared to how PCTs did things, as they are now about clinical commissioning, clinical decisions and "the relationships between the between clinicians and the patients".